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Thursday March 28, 2024

Govt faces huge challenge for weeding out deadwood from bureaucracy

A top aide of Prime Minister Imran Khan told The News on Tuesday that the process of retiring incompetent and poor performers prematurely from the civil service may start this year

By Ansar Abbasi
February 19, 2020

ISLAMABAD: Under the newly-approved civil service reforms, the government will constitute high-powered boards and committee to weed-out the deadwood from civilian bureaucracy.

A top aide of Prime Minister Imran Khan told The News on Tuesday that the process of retiring incompetent and poor performers prematurely from the civil service may start this year. He, however, said that the mechanism and processes to implement the government’s order will be finalised and put in place after due diligence to ensure that the initiative is not shot down by the judiciary.

Disgruntled elements within the bureaucracy, it is feared, will definitely reactand may challenge their pre-mature retirement from the government service in the court of law. The source said that the government wants to make the processes legally sound to defend the government’s action in the court of law.

Detailed civil service reform package approved by the government last week, resolved to retire nonperforming and inefficient government servants after the completion of 20 years of service.

The reform paper as approved says that Section 13 of the Civil Servants Act envisages that civil servants shall retire after twenty years of service, as may be directed by the competent authority and where no such direction is given, on reaching sixty years of service. However, the option of retirement after twenty years of service has never been exercised by the government, resulting in assured career path till sixty years, discouraging initiative and competition.

It adds that the Civil Service (Retirement from Service) Rules 2020 to review the performance of civil servants have been finalised and entails mandatory performance review of all civil servants after twenty years of service.

The reform paper says that regular reviews will be done even after 20 years of service and the government will have the option to retire civil servants after 20-year service following the prescribed procedure. This policy will encourage efficiency and competition and weed out incompetent officer, being done for the first time. Now the government will develop the “prescribed procedure” and establish high powered board and committees, which after the review will recommend premature retirement of incompetent officers for the approval of the competent authority. In the past, some governments had also wished to weed out the deadwood from the civilian bureaucracy but it could not be done because of the strong opposition from within the civil services.

Last time during late 2013, the then prime minister had issued direction for cleansing of the bureaucracy from corrupt, incompetent and irregular bureaucrats but it had gone unnoticed and generally ignored by the ministries and divisions.

Neither the processes were established nor the government later showed any keenness to pursue the objective.